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Job 18
Bildad the Shuhite speaks for the second time, stung that Job treats the friends as cattle, too stupid to follow his words. His answer is almost entirely one extended portrait: the fate of the wicked man, traced from his snuffed-out lamp to his erased name. Notice the imagery of traps. Bildad piles up net, snare, noose, and trap across verses 8 to 10, as if the wicked walks into a landscape rigged to catch him at every step.
- 1
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered,
- 2
“How long will you hunt for words? Consider, and afterwards we will speak.
- 3
Why are we counted as animals, which have become unclean in your sight?
- 4
You who tear yourself in your anger, will the earth be forsaken for you? Or will the rock be removed out of its place?
- 5
“Yes, the light of the wicked will be put out. The spark of his fire won’t shine.
- 6
The light will be dark in his tent. His lamp above him will be put out.
- 7
The steps of his strength will be shortened. His own counsel will cast him down.
- 8
For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he wanders into its mesh.
- 9
A snare will take him by the heel. A trap will catch him.
- 10
A noose is hidden for him in the ground, a trap for him on the path.
- 11
Terrors will make him afraid on every side, and will chase him at his heels.
- 12
His strength will be famished. Calamity will be ready at his side.
- 13
The members of his body will be devoured. The firstborn of death will devour his members.
- 14
He will be rooted out of the security of his tent. He will be brought to the king of terrors.
- 15
There will dwell in his tent that which is none of his. Sulfur will be scattered on his habitation.
- 16
His roots will be dried up beneath. His branch will be cut off above.
- 17
His memory will perish from the earth. He will have no name in the street.
- 18
He will be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.
- 19
He will have neither son nor grandson among his people, nor any remaining where he lived.
- 20
Those who come after will be astonished at his day, as those who went before were frightened.
- 21
Surely such are the dwellings of the unrighteous. This is the place of him who doesn’t know God.”
A doom that is really an accusation
The point of this set piece is its target. By describing how the wicked man loses tent, roots, branches, memory, and offspring, Bildad is sketching Job's own losses and inviting him to read himself into the portrait of "him who doesn't know God" (verse 21).
The grimmest stroke is verse 14: dragged from the safety of his tent to "the king of terrors." Bildad offers no comfort, only a theology in which calamity is proof of guilt.
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